Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

@BigChocFrenzy

sos That's so unfair for your DGD who has got her chance through brains and hard work, not tutoring and has struggled on despite her health

I really hope she nails the offer she wants most 🤛🏼
Do let us know when you get the news later

SoS everything crossed for her💐

As always thanks to Red & all contributors

There is also a group of veterans out along with the dads and mums. Saying that they swore to protect the constitution.
Even if Trump wins he will find out that this is an old old struggle and empires do not last.

@ListeningQuietly

DGR The election will be held and if he loses, under the constitution, any federal officer who obeys him rather than the winner will be arrested - quite probably by the Portland Police

www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-stealing-election/

@Pepperwort

There is also a group of veterans out along with the dads and mums. Saying that they swore to protect the constitution. Even if Trump wins he will find out that this is an old old struggle and empires do not last.

Shades of the Green Beret legend ...

America’s produced any number of films and writings about the triumph of ordinary peoples’ freedoms without violence, merely through persistence. The question I suppose is how persistent the followers of Trump will be, or whether foreign powers choose to act.

@Pepperwort

America’s produced any number of films and writings about the triumph of ordinary peoples’ freedoms without violence, merely through persistence. The question I suppose is how persistent the followers of Trump will be, or whether foreign powers choose to act.

But America is also Full Of Shit.

Formed by a violent insurrection that was only not treason because they won, and that was very unpleasant for anyone who didn't agree with it (sound familiar to any "Remoaners" ?). Whilst simultaneously and sanctimoniously lecturing the world about "democracy" and "tyranny" the Founding Fathers wasted not a second ensuring that slaves stayed slaves with the full support of the newly minted Constitution (i.e. leaving out all the bits that Paine, and others had put in about freedom for all) and that genocide was made into Gods Will, as promise after promise was broken (and remain broken to this day) to the original inhabitants of that Great Land.

Land of the Free ? hardly.
Home of the Brave ? What's brave about genocide ?

Hopefully, since this is sparked by black rights, it’s time to try and walk away from Omelas. There isn’t a road map.

@Pepperwort

Hopefully, since this is sparked by black rights, it’s time to try and walk away from Omelas. There isn’t a road map.

In the same century you typed that, a Senator for Arkansas has gone into battle insisting that slavery was a "necessary evil"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53550882

It is a conflict, yes. Do you think it shouldn’t be attempted?

I could bore you by going on about a half-understood rejection of Roman imperialism and slavery, and the technology and political compromises humans have since found to work together without it. Imperialism and variations do keep coming back and no doubt the top hierarchies will always be tempted, but do you want to stand back and let it?

DGR
I'm well aware of the US disenfranchisement crisis
but so are those who want to be certain they will get a vote

I see regular posts about the rules and guidance and hassles of postal voting and the like

the thing to remember is that many in the GOP actually loathe Trump and they realise that he is doing them massive massive harm if he gets in again.
Because he will make them unelectable for a generation
it may be better to lose in 2020 than for the whole of the 2020s

It seems to me that American resistance isn’t going away. Media has been insulted by Trump and appears, if I can speak if it collectively, to be ensuring coverage of views. The same has happened here with Johnson.

This is an interesting one. www.foxnews.com/us/america-protests-violent-riots-expected-to-continue

I've noticed what I suspect are Trumpers on FWR, because they are taking over some trans threads,
citing Breitbart etc,
diverting the GC debate into an attack on BLM and echoing Trump's allegations that they are terrorists,
that CNN - Mrs Thatcher's favourite news source - are leftwing subversives.

Remember, Trump is the guy who helped IRA / Sinn Fein fundraise back in the 90s when the IRA were bombing London
Are the alt-right posters ignorant or doesn't it count when Brits are the victims ?
Some Special Relationship we have

If GC feminists here don't clean the alt right vermin out of their house, I'll be dropping my support

Racism blighted much of my early life, but in practice, like most people of colour, the trans issue has not affected me personally or anyone I know.
If I have to choose, no contest which is more important

I do not have the time on here to know all posting histories or follow all academic nuances etc, but a quick glance at the thread apparently annoying you shows many people raising those questions BCF. The trouble is many women feel betrayed by the left and so are forced to look further afield. Sexism (which is what trans and the left’s silence boils down to) defines many women as much as racism has sadly defined you - and we have the examples in the UK of Rotherham and Telford to worry about, issues with Asian cultures rather than African. Intersections are difficult. I hope you never have to choose. Interesting times we live in as diverse voices get through the old binaries.

Îf someone thinks the answer is to turn to Breitbart, or the neo-Nazis in the AfD
then they are a much bigger problem than the stupid gesture politics of the left

Many in the AfD actually excuse and celebrate the old Nazi criminals, deny the Holocaust.

It is interesting that those posters pay cursory attention to GC feminism, before moving onto Trumpian rants about BLM in the USA - who are not about Muslims or Asians
So what is the relevance on a British site discussing GC feminism ?

Trump has a long-standing hate of African Americans, but they are nearly all Christian or atheistic, not Muslim

If GC feminism degenerates to a branch office of the far right, then without doubt I'll be voting - on MN and in rl - against GC feminism

I've already decided to stop actively supporting GC here

"issues with Asian cultures rather than African"

So why the fuck parrot Trump's attacks on the US BLM - or should everyone non-white in the world share the guilt of a tiny minority of Pakistanis in England ?

Trump helped fund terrorism in London, so him calling demonstrators - even the timy minority who loot- "terrorists" is the height of hypocrisy

As for violence in London, did everyone on FWR not notice the white counter-demostrators giving Nazi salutes and violently attacking the police ?

Language is intetesting...
BLM protesters = rioters
Far right neo nazi thugs = protestors

Any organisation that can only draw support from the angry alienated element who feel hard-done-by is likely to fail in the US. The frontier spirit is still alive and well in most of small town America. If you want to blame someone/anyone but yourself for any shortcomings in your life, find another country to live in. America is the spiritual home of the pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again mentality. It's why Trump is likely to win a second term, and I am no fan of his, but Joe Biden as the other choice? Too old, principally... pay attention to his running mate choice.

I am not a fan of alt-right either, @BigChocFrenzy and giving them any sort of airtime now will bite us collectively on the arse sooner or later.

I support women's existing rights to single-sex spaces and the right to define ourselves (in using the word "female" or "woman"), organise ourselves and campaign for ourselves. I refuse to roll over for the cancel culture and find it fucking depressing that this is considered revolutionary. I would much rather spend my energy on anti-racist work and helping to demolish the double hit of misogyny and othering that BAME females face.

"angry alienated element who feel hard-done-by"

They genuinely are hard done by, ever since the USA was founded - on slavery:

the descendants of slaves who were kidnapped and brought to the USA, where they were most brutally treated as property, to be whipped, rapd , tortured at the whim of their owners

Even after slavery was abolished, there were the infamous Jim Crow laws in the former slave states, to keep down African Americans

Even in the 1960s, there were actual laws in some states forbidding them to use certain toilets, places on buses, hotels etc

Since the Civil RIghts Acts were passed, the police, private prisons and the whole system of justice have been used to oppress black Americans and / or profit from them.
The numbers of black men killed by the polcie or imprisoned in the USA is horrific
Being killed by the police is actually one of the leading cases of death for black men
and no .... black men are not inherently criminal

Even now, a Republican politician can describe slavery as a "necessary evil" for the US economy at the time

The oppression of African Americans - and the genocide of Native Americans - have been a disgraceful stain on the USA since its formation

When I lived in Jersey City, many years ago now, there were quite a few Indo- Asian people in my 25 unit apartment block. I knew most of them casually for a chat, and they had migrated for a better shot at life. They were not coming for hand-outs (none on offer). The goal was to ensure their children had a chance at becoming professionals and successful via work and education. They understood the mantra that the only place success comes before work is in a dictionary. And 35 years later, I'd put a substantial bet on the likelihood that most of the kids now have nice houses in the leafy suburbs that surround NYC and very few are living in dodgy dangerous neighborhoods in Newark and Paterson.

I'm a GC feminist - or maybe I was
I refuse to be allied with the alt-right

GC feminists need to do some house-cleaning, because noone successfully "uses" fascists to combat something else
They always get taken over

e.g. German conservatives supported Hitler and ignored his racist rhetoric, because they thought he would defend them against the dreaded Communists they feared so much.
That didn't work out well for them, having their country reduced to rubble and occupied in 1945, with 4 million military dead and 500,000 civilians
btw, Germany has an even greater disparity than other countries in the male / female numbers for age 90+